As is known in the art, serializers/de-serializers (SERDES) are used in many systems for transferring data from a source on one printed circuit board to a destination on a second printed circuit board, where the two boards are plugged into a common backplane.
More particularly, the source produces the data as parallel data. The parallel data is converted by a SERDES into serial data. The serial data is transmitted to the backplane where it passes as serial data to a second SERDES for the destination. The second SERDES converts the serial data into parallel data for the destination of the second printed circuit board.
As is also known in the art, it is desirable to test the system, including the integrity of the serial data, i.e., in effect analog type pulses, produced by the SERDES prior to proceeding with commercial production. Further, it is desirable to test the effect of the designer's backplane on such analog signals.
Further, while multiple vendors offer SERDES, it is important to establish a testing method that will be independent of the vendors. More particularly, SERDES testing was generally limited to testing the quality of the analog signal; i.e., the quality of serial data. There was no external bit error rate testing using the system designer's signal test pattern, and the system designer typically was required to rely on the vendor's pattern generator. If the designer wanted to test its pattern, the designer had to design a complete chip with the SERDES thereby requiring undesirable time loss and resource consumption. If the designer wanted to test system interoperability, the designer typically was required to design two chips; an impractical situation.